Let The Right One In DVD

Directed by Tomas Alfredson, Let The Right One In is not a horror as you would expect but is a touching love story with a dark edge.
Oskar is a gentle 12-year-old boy who's bullied at school by some of his classmates and is unable to build up the courage to stand-up for himself. Then he meets Eli, who moves in next door and she gives him the strength he's been searching for to exact his revenge. But Eli isn't a normal little girl, she is a vampire who must kill to live and when the bodies begin mounting-up Oskar discovers the truth but finds he cannot forsake his new friend as he battles with his feelings for her.
Let The Right One In is an intelligent story which revolves around the tender relationship between the children and the blood-bath that surrounds them.

Please note this is a region 2 DVD and will require a region 2 or region free DVD player in order to play Oskar (Kare Hedebrant) is a 12-year-old outcast who is frequently picked on by his classmates He dreams of getting his revenge but he never stands up to the boys With the arrival of his new next-door neighbour 12-year-old Eli (Lina Leandersson) Oskar may finally have found a friend ally and first love But Eli is no ordinary girl she must keep her pale skin out of the sunlight she can perform inhuman physical feats and she has thirst for blood The bodies begin to pile up but Oskar can&39;t stay away from the girl who has finally given him courage

Acclaimed Swedish horror film based on the novel by John Ajvide Lindqvist, who also wrote the screenplay for the film. Oskar (Kare Hedebrant) is a sensitive, fragile, 12-year-old boy, living in the suburbs of Stockholm in the early 1980s, who is bullied at school and spends his nights dreaming of revenge and rehearsing knife attacks in the courtyard behind his apartment building. There he meets his new next-door neighbour Eli (Lina Leandersson), a mysterious girl of his own age who turns out to be a vampire. With Eli on his side, Oskar is finally able to face up to the bullies who have made his life such a misery, but Eli's unquenchable thirst for blood brings problems of its own.

Average Rating for Let The Right One In [2008] - 4 out of 5

(based on 1 user reviews)

Let The Right One In [2008]

Barnaby Walter21 May 2009

Vampire relationships seem to be the in-thing at the moment. Twilight, the Brief Encounter of Vamp-flicks being the most accessible of this craze, is currently racking up the millions in the DVD charts. Lesbian Vampire Killers, a disappointing, tongue-in-cheek take on the blood-suckers theme is also making a tidy sum. Unfortunately, it is almost definite that these two films will add zeros onto their box-office takings in the UK a lot quicker than Let the Right One In, which is in my view the best Vampire movie ever made.

Now, there are reasons why I was one of only five people in the opening night screening of Let the Right One In, an achingly melancholy story about young love and merciless power. The first reason - it's in Swedish. Subtitled of course, but that's enough to put off the regular Friday-nighters. Secondly - it's released the same week as 17 Again (a hot, smooth, teen-friendly Zac Efron vehicle), Fast and Furious (a Vin Diesel vehicle) and Race to Witch Mountain (a Dwayne Jonson vehicle). I'm not naïve enough to suggest the star-power of a leading actor is the only variable when it comes to cinema takings, but it's too big to be ignored. In the cold, grey-white, snow-covered landscapes of Sweden, there are no topless Zacs, grunting Diesels or square-jawed Johnsons to push up the publicity value and fill the theatres. There is only pure, uncompromised story-telling, and the ability to execute it with outstanding, visceral, nerve-shredding competence.

Like Twilight (rather cosy, compared to this), Let the Right One In is about the relationship between two young lovers - one a human, the other a vampire. However, what it doesn't do is fill in the narrative gaps with goofy vampire base-ball and hip Muse tracks. Instead, it busies itself with the pain of love and the need for an accepting friendship. Blonde haired, quiet mannered Oskar lives with his mum in a council flat. He is being bullied at school, and takes out his anger towards his tormentors by stabbing a tree with a pocket knife at night in the snow-covered court-yard. He is witnessed doing this by Eli, who, at first appearance, appears to be a poor, frail 12-year-old girl, living in a nearby flat. Eli has curious traits - she only ventures out of doors at night, she has the ability to solve problems quickly and methodically (such as a Rubik's cube) and all the windows of her flat are boarded up with cardboard. We learn she is a vampire quite early on, as she sends her alleged father out to drain the odd passing local for blood. It takes Oskar more time to figure out her species, but when he does his shock gives way to apparent, new found strength. He has always been the boy without friends, without anyone to save him from the bullies. Now, he is in love with a vampire, a vampire that goads him to fight back "hard". She says this with icy certainty - "Hit back. Hard".

It doesn't take a genius to work out that the bullies do get some sort of comeuppance, but in an inventive and shocking way that makes us question our own feelings of revenge and the necessity of control through fear. There are some truly horrifying images to be seen here, one of the most notable is the bleeding of Eli. When she passes through a doorway without invitation she bleeds from every pore - skin, eyes, mouth, nose. It is both a disturbing and beautiful image that is impossible to forget. This type of visual power is not wasted nor overused. The vampire-attacks are never ruined by pumped CGI, and the reason why a vampire can't feel sunlight is stunningly realised in a scene which shocks the audience ruthlessly for five nerve-shredding seconds.

As you may have already gathered, I consider this film to be a masterpiece. Horror the way horror should be done - grinding sadness and despair. Intelligent horror makes you cry tears of pain and sorrow as well as fright. Let the Right One In should be held up as an example of how this should be done.

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